Open a TextEditor on a resource from your workspace (e.g. a java file, or .txt file).

Open the Context Menu (right click) on the editor, and you should see a context menu like this

Select the target user to share your editor session with. Note that if you select a target user

that is not running ECF it will have no effect and the target user will see nothing. In M5 we will be filtering users in the context menu to show only the ones actually able to engage in ECF editor sharing.

How to Stop

Open the context menu for the editor being shared.

Select "Stop Sharing Editor with ..."

Screen Shots

There is now a plugin org.eclipse.ecf.docshare to provides some support for the ongoing work on RT Shared Editing. What this plugin does is expose an ECF Roster Menus in the context menu of all Eclipse-based text editors (e.g. java editor and text editor) so that shared editing can be initiated directly from within the existing editor UI.

Here is the 'slewis' client (the initiator), before starting editor sharing

Here is the 'fliwatuet' client (the receiver), before starting editor sharing

Fliwatuet receives a notice (to be replaced with a new notification system soon) and can accept or reject the shared editing session

If fliwatuet accepts, the editor is opened with slewis current editor content on fliwatuet's workbench

At this point, both participants can edit the text and updates will be immediately distributed and shown on the other's corresponding editor.

So, for example, here fliwatuet enters a new method (baz)

These same updates appear immediately on slewis' workbench. Slewis can also make changes and these are reflected on fliwatuet's workbench

Note that currently this editor does not do conflict resolution, and so the editors can get get out of synch. But this will soon be remedied by adding the resolution code from Mustafa's work on the real-time shared editing, aka Cola.

This new plugin source is available via the project set file. For committers, get the project set file with extssh access here